Reforms aimed at breaking the curse of corruption in the Philippines must include a thorough cleansing of the Senate to dismantle the entrenched mafia that has long shielded its members from serious allegations.

Its leadership has repeatedly invoked legislative immunity and independence to fend off demands for accountability, turning these principles into excuses rather than safeguards of democracy.

Take the case of lawyer Marvin Aceron, who’s involved in several infrastructure cases and, on 2 October, filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee against Senator Chiz Escudero for accepting conflicted money.

The Omnibus Election Code prohibits candidates from accepting donations from companies that have ongoing government contracts for goods, services, or construction projects.

Aceron’s sole motivation, according to him, was his dismay over the slow progress of the investigations into the corruption scandal, particularly in pursuing the big fish.

In his ethics complaint, Aceron sought to refute the claim of Escudero and Centerways Construction and Development Inc. president Lawrence Lubiano that the P30-million campaign donation in 2022 was made on Lubiano’s personal volition and not on behalf of his company.

What Aceron did was pretty simple: look into Centerways’ retained earnings. Retained earnings are the portion of a company’s net income that is kept in the business rather than distributed to shareholders as dividends.

In the company’s 2022 SEC filing, Aceron said there was an item for P35 million that disappeared from the filings for 2023 and 2024.

Aceron thus believes that Lubiano’s defense that he used his personal funds to boost Escudero’s Senate bid is not valid.

“The thing is, they did not explain why the P35 million vanished. A decent financial statement would say, ‘Oh, the P35 million was miscalculated, or the P35 million was declared as dividends.’ They did not do that. It just vanished,” Aceron asserted.

The corporate lawyer, however, said  the Senate has not acted on his complaint.

“I don’t have a case number. I don’t even know if Escudero has received a copy of my complaint. You know, it’s better to file a complaint with the  barangay because there you are given a case number immediately,” he noted.

What made matters worse, Aceron said, was that Escudero has been coming out in the media, discrediting the ethics complaint as the handiwork of the House leadership to harass the Senate.

His response to Escudero: “I don’t associate with corrupt politicians and, especially, I have very, very few politician friends and definitely I’m not connected to any participants in this big scam.”

He said that an ethics case was logical, since Escudero admitted receiving money from Lubiano, who in turn admitted giving it.

“Then take a look at the corporate history of Centerways, which is 99-percent owned by Lubiano — it later received P720 million worth of contracts in the first and second congressional districts of Sorsogon — and you can piece the puzzle,” he said.

Aceron’s frustration mirrors the broader disappointment fueling the outrage in the streets.

As the coverups spread and more elected officials are implicated, despair deepens over the state of the country’s failing democracy.